Seven Hells

“I don’t understand,” I said to Sam as the three of us walked up the walkway to the front door of the Collins residence, “Are you two secretly undercover cops or something? I—I’m just trying to fit the pieces together.” Dean looked back to glare at Sam before knocking on the door.

“I’ll tell you tonight. Please, just, for now… just roll with it,” Sam begged.

“I’ve been rolling with it—”

The front door opened and revealed a younger looking brunette woman. I instantly closed my mouth and allowed Dean to work his magic. “You must be Haley Collins. I’m Dean. This is Sam and Emma. We’re, ah, we’re rangers with the Park Service. Ranger Wilkinson sent us over. He wanted us to ask a few questions about your brother, Tommy.”

Haley hesitated, glancing between the three of us. “Let me see some ID.” I watched in disbelief as Dean produced a fake ID and showed it to her. Haley looked at it, then back at the three of us, before opening the screen door. “Come on in.”

“Thanks,” Dean said, and Haley peered back at his car.

“That yours?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded.

“Nice car,” Haley commented, and turned to lead the three of us deeper into the house and into the kitchen. A teenage boy who she introduced as her younger brother, Ben, sat at the kitchen island on a laptop. “So, what can I help you three with?”



“If Tommy isn’t due back for awhile, how do you know something’s wrong?”

Haley came back into the room with a tray of drinks that she placed down on the island counter. “He checks in every day by cell. He emails, sends photos, stupid little videos—we haven’t heard anything in over three days now. That isn’t like Tommy.”

“Maybe he can’t get cell reception,” Sam suggested.

“He’s got a satellite phone, too.”

“Could it be that he’s just having fun and forgot to check in?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Haley said, shaking her head, “Our parents are gone. It’s just my two brothers and me, so we all tend to keep pretty close tabs on each other.” I nodded, averting my gaze to the waters on the tray before taking one.

“Can I see the pictures he sent you?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. Ben, can you pull them up?”

Ben slid the laptop over to his sister within seconds. She angled the laptop to the three of us and clicked through a few pictures. “That’s Tommy,” she said, and clicked once more to reveal the latest video he had sent her. She pressed play and his face appeared on the screen.

“Hey, guys,” Tommy spoke from inside his tent, giving the camera a small wave, “Day six. We’re still our near Blackwater Ridge. We’re fine. We’re keeping safe, so don’t worry, okay? I’ll check in tomorrow. Goodnight.”

“Well, we’ll find your brother. We’re heading out to Blackwater Ridge first thing tomorrow,” Dean said, and I shot him a subtle look out of the corner of my eye. Sam gave my thigh a light squeeze under the counter, reminding me of his promise.

“Then maybe I’ll see you all there. Look, I can’t just sit around here anymore,” Haley explained, letting out an exasperated sigh, “So, I hired a guy. We’re heading out in the morning, and we’re going to find Tommy ourselves. Ranger Wilkinson has proven himself useless.”

“Do you mind forwarding these pictures to me? And the video, too?” Sam asked.



“So,” I said, side glaring my fiance as he clicked through the pictures Haley had sent to his email address a few hours prior. Dean joined us again in the booth, placing two bottles of beer in front of us before taking a swig of his own. “What exactly do you and your dad hunt, Dean?”

“Seriously, dude? That’s as far as you got?” Dean looked to Sam.

“I told her that our family was big on hunting things,” Sam shrugged.

“Things?” Dean reaffirmed, an incredulous chuckle following.

“It wasn’t the time or place. We were at the ranger station—”

“And now we’re not, so spit it out,” I demanded.

Dean raised his eyebrows at my words, seemingly mildly impressed with my attitude. “You know, I kind of like this girl, Sammy. Thought she was a real bitch when she had a gun pointed at me, but she’s growing on me. She’s a real spitfire, as Dad would say,” he said, and I crossed my arms as he took another swig of his beer. I was getting sick of these two brothers and their habit of going back and forth with everything. “If he won’t be straight with you, I will. We hunt monsters.”

“Monsters?” I frowned. Sam turned to look at me.

“No, not monsters. Supernatural entities,” Sam corrected his brother.

“Ah. Forgive me. A stark difference,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.

“Supernatural entities?” I repeated for extra measure, and both of the brothers nodded at me. I watched them for a few moments before shaking my head and standing up from the booth. “You know what—I’ve had enough of this. This is beyond the point of being ridiculous.”

“Emma, wait—”

“Supernatural entities? For Christ’s sake, Sam, I would rather you have just kept avoiding the subject than try to hack up something like that. Monsters? No—if after three years we aren’t at the point in our relationship where you can just tell me the truth instead of making up a lie about descending from a family of monster hunters, then I’m buying a pass for the next bus back to Stanford.”

“This is one of the reasons I didn’t want to tell you,” Sam said, slamming his laptop shut and looking back up at me. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I grew up in that lifestyle and I still can hardly believe it. Emma, I swear, I’m not lying to you. I know what it sounds like but you just need to believe me. For the love of God, just sit back down.”

I turned to look at Dean who was focusing intently on his bottle of beer, as if it held secrets to all that was holy. He looked up at me and shrugged before nodding towards my seat. I looked between the two brothers for a moment more before sitting back down and taking my coat off. Sam moved to put his arm around my waist and I held my hand up at him. “Keep that arm away from me for the time being if you ever want to use it again,” I said, and he retracted his arm. “So, exactly how much of this little story is true? Because where I’m at right now…”

“Our father was on a hunting trip in Blackwater Ridge,” Dean said, scratching the back of his head, “Everything Sam and me have told you has been true—except for, well, what he was hunting.” I nodded, taking a swig of my beer in hopes that it would help me absorb this information.

“And how does this Haley girl come into play?”

“Blackwater Ridge doesn’t get a lot of traffic,” Sam said, “Local campers, mostly. But still, this past April, two hikers went missing out there. They were never found. In 1982, eight different people all vanished in the same year. Authorities said it was a grizzly attack. And again in 1959, and again before that in 1936. Every twenty-three years, just like clockwork.”

I glanced between the brothers and exhaled a breath.

“Let me guess. You don’t believe any of those were grizzly attacks.”

“I think we were led here for a reason,” Sam said, and reopened his laptop. “Okay. Watch this. Here’s a clincher. I downloaded that guy Tommy’s video to the laptop. Check this out.” Dean slid out of his side of the booth and leaned over next to me, watching as Sam pulled up the video and went through three frames of it one at a time. A shadow crossed the screen behind Tommy’s tent.

“Do it again,” Dean said, and Sam did.

“That’s three frames. That’s a fraction of a second. Whatever that thing is, it can move,” Sam said, and switched back to his web browser to another newspaper article. “I got one more thing. In ‘59 one camper survived this supposed grizzly attack. Just a kid. Barely crawled out of the woods alive.”

“Is there a name?” Dean asked.

“Edward Shaw,” Sam said.

“There’s our guy. We should pay Ed Shaw a little visit tonight,” Dean said, sitting back in his side of the booth and reaching into the front pockets of his denim jeans. He tossed the keys to the Impala to Sam. “You two go get the car going. See if you can pull up an address for this Shaw guy, if he’s still alive. I’ll pay up and meet you out there.”

Sam closed his laptop and shoved it into his book bag before leading me out of the bar. I slid into the backseat of the Impala and he got into the passenger’s, scrolling on his Blackberry to try to find some public record of Edward Shaw in Fairplay, Colorado.

“You’re still mad at me,” Sam said, not looking up from his cell phone.

“That’s an understatement.”

He scribbled something down on a piece of paper he’d found in Dean’s glove box before turning to look at me. “I wanted to tell you. Believe me, I did. I haven’t kept this hidden from you for so long to keep you in the dark—”

“That’s exactly why you kept it hidden—”

“Just let me talk for once, would you? Jesus, you’re like—like Dean sometimes,” he said, fully pivoting his body to me. “My dad and him, they hunt for a living. That’s their lifestyle. A lifestyle that I wanted nothing to do with. I’m studying to become a lawyer, Emma. I never told you about it not because I wanted to keep you in the dark, but because I wanted to forget about it. Why do you think you’ve never met Dean? My dad? I haven’t seen them in years. Since I left for Stanford! They’re all but estranged from me. I love them, but our lifestyles aren’t compatible.”

“You’re really from a… bloodline of hunters, then?”

“And Men of Letters,” Sam said, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Men of Letters? What is that?”

“A secret organization of scholars who study the supernatural.”

I blinked at Sam. “You understand why this is a lot to take in?”

“Yes, Emma. I understand completely,” he nodded.

“I’m really, really finding it hard to keep myself from grand theft autoing your brother’s car and bringing you back to Stanford for a psych evaluation. And then myself right after,” I mumbled, putting a hand over my face. Sam leaned forward over the seat and cupped my face with his hands.

“I love you,” he said, kissing my lips, “And I swear, once we find my dad, this is totally over and done with. We can go back to Stanford, pack up our little apartment, and make way for Connecticut on January fifteenth,” he kissed my lips once more, “And if after all of this is over you still feel inclined to send me in for a psych evaluation, I’ll wholeheartedly support your decision. But I promise that’s not the case.”

“Alright, lovebirds,” Dean said, swinging the driver’s side door open and causing the both of us to jump apart slightly, “Seats might be leather but that doesn’t mean I want to be washing anything off of ‘em. What was that rule at the middle school dances? Arm’s length between the two of you?”

“Do you always have to be so crude?” Sam asked.

“Crude’s my middle name,”

“It’s Samuel,” Sam said.

“Your middle name is Samuel?” I asked, cocking my head.

“That it is. And Sam’s is Dean,” Dean said.

“I feel like I’m going to wake up from a very weird dream soon,” I said.

“Not a dream, baby, just the sick humor of John and Mary Winchester,” Dean smirked.

“Dean was also named after our maternal grandmother, Deanna,” Sam said.

“Yep. On that note, we get an address for this guy?”

“Uh, yeah—347 Adventure Road, Fairplay.”

“Alright. Let’s see what this guy has to say for himself.”

“Adventure Road?” I asked, unabashedly bursting into laughter as Dean threw his car into drive and pulled out of the bar’s parking lot. “This just keeps getting better and better. Oh my God. I’m still in Stanford. Took some acid at a Greek House party, now I’m having a bad trip in a Tolkien novel. That’s exactly what’s going on here.” Sam turned around to laugh with me, and I was surprised to see that Dean even cracked a smile.

“You always this much of a skeptic?” Dean asked.

“If it isn’t logical, it isn’t true,” I said.

“Uh-huh. And that’s why you’re wearing that rock on your finger, ‘cause you two have the exact same outlook on life,” Dean snorted, glancing at me in the rearview mirror, “Stick around with this family for a bit longer and you’ll learn that life isn’t logical. Sammy’s learned the hard way, try as he might to forget.”